The Long Road Home [The Final McCassey Brothers Book] (25 page)

As Blackie had expected, nearly every light in his house was shining bright when he turned the corner and pulled his bike into the driveway.

It didn't matter that it was almost midnight. Blackie knew that Angel would be up waiting for him.

He didn't know what he'd been thinking when he jumped on his Harley and took off after his fight with Georgia. He'd only known that for both his and Georgia's sakes, he'd needed to get the hell out of the house before he did something else he was going to regret.

The pain of knowing he'd broken a promise and betrayed his sister had settled in his chest, causing it to tighten every time he thought about what he'd done.

He couldn't believe he'd hit her.

As angry as he'd been at both of his brothers in the past ... even as infuriated as he was with Angel when she refused to listen to reason about her brother's murder, he'd never gone after any of them the way he'd gone after Georgia.

Why had he done it? What the hell was wrong with him that he had to go after a scrawny little girl he outweighed by two hundred pounds? Even as he was reaching for Georgia, he'd known that he could've killed her with one simple swing of his arm. Yet, he still hadn't been able to stop himself.

The line he'd crossed today was unforgivable.

Deep down, Blackie had always felt that he was unfit to keep company with decent people, and today, he'd proven it was true.

Now he had to figure out what to do about it.

Halfway up the driveway, Blackie shut down his engine. Gripping the handlebars tightly, he swung his right leg over the seat, then began pushing the bike up toward the house. He'd be a fool to think that Angel was sleeping. Most likely, she was sitting in the living room with a loaded gun, waiting to blow his head off for acting like such a stupid ass. But his kids—if Angel hadn't left them with Judd and Dusty—were probably asleep, and he didn't want to wake them.

After parking his bike on the front sidewalk, Blackie walked the steps to the front door and turned the knob, pushing the heavy wooden door open as quietly as possible. Its hinges creaked, as usual, but he barely noticed. He was too busy staring at his wife, whose red-rimmed eyes gave away the fact that she'd been crying.

He entered the kitchen slowly. Blackie noticed that the room had been put back together, and the mess he'd made during his fight with Georgia had been cleaned up; the tiny smear of blood on the wall was the only evidence that anything had been amiss in the room.

His sister's blood.

The blood he'd drawn when he slapped her across the face and cut her lip.

Shaking his head, he removed his leather jacket and draped it over a chair.

"It's late,” he told Angel solemnly. “You should be sleepin'."

She ignored him.

Cringing, Blackie was expecting a full-on attack, which he was prepared for. She knew. She knew everything that had happened. He could see it on her face.

What he wasn't prepared for was his wife pushing her chair away from the table and launching herself into his arms.

He caught her against his chest, his heart breaking for the second time that day as he felt her silent sobs.

He didn't deserve her ... he didn't deserve anyone.

"I'm sorry, Angel Face,” he whispered into her hair. “I fucked up, and I'm so damn sorry."

"I'm just glad Church found you."

"How—” he started to ask, but he already knew. Church had found him in a bar just over the Virginia state line. He'd explained that he'd gotten a call from Judd.

Blackie and his old friend had nursed a couple of beers and talked for a good two hours before he'd turned around and headed back home. He'd been wrong to leave town. As much as he'd needed to step away from the situation, he should've fled down to the basement and beaten on his heavy bag for a few hours instead of abandoning his family and leaving his brothers to clean up his mess.

"I'll fix it, Angel, I'll fix everything, I promise."

Angel backed away from him, wiped her eyes, and sniffed. “She's gone, Blackie. Judd and Rebel looked everywhere, but they couldn't find her. Even Jay was out searching. Georgia's gone."

Swearing that his heart had momentarily stopped beating, Blackie took a second to compose himself. “What the hell do you mean, they couldn't find her? This is Hagerstown, for Christ's sake. It's a small place and Georgia don't have many places to go. Did they check the garage?"

She nodded. “They checked everywhere. The garage, Rebel's house, the woods, the bus station, even Wade's."

Blackie stomach flipped violently. His first thought when Angel said his brothers hadn't been able to find Georgia was that she'd probably run to their cousin. “Wade ain't seen her, either?"

"He wasn't home when they stopped by, so they left a note on his door. They haven't heard from him."

Relieved, Blackie sighed. “Then the two of them are probably together, Angel. It ain't no secret that I don't like the guy, but I have to admit, I do trust him. Durin’ the time he was stayin’ at the garage helpin’ Georgia, he proved he's worthy of at least that much."

"You really think she's with him?"

He hoped so, because the alternative—the only other place she could possibly be—was a place where she'd find nothing but trouble. “I really don't know, Angel Face, but I intend to find out."

When Blackie reached for his leather jacket, Angel reached out and covered his hand with hers. “Wait!"

He stopped and turned to look at her.

"I'm glad you came home. I was worried."

Momentarily abandoning his jacket, Blackie drew his wife into his arms once again. “Ain't no way I woulda left for good, Angel. I love you too much to hurt you like that. The babies, too. I took off earlier because it was too dangerous for me not to. I was so goddamn angry that I couldn't see straight. I lost control and did somethin’ I swore I'd never do, and will be lucky if Georgia forgives me."

"Why, Blackie,” Angel asked, tightening her hold around his waist, “why'd you go after her? She's just a kid."

"When I thought she was usin’ again, all I could think about was how she'd lied to us, broken her promise not to touch heroin again. All of us gave up so much for her in the past few months, and then to have her turn on us like that pissed me off."

"Is that the only reason?"

"Probably not. But I'm still so fuckin’ angry that I ain't had time to put my thoughts together."

"Do you really think she broke her promise?"

"I did,” he said slowly. “All the signs pointed to it."

"But now you don't?"

Blackie shook his head. “I don't know what I think, Angel. All I know is that there I was, angry as shit because she'd broken a promise to us, and what did I do? I turned around and broke one I made her.

"I knew she could relapse. From what I've heard, most addicts do. It ain't like I ain't never made the same mistake more than once. Hell, I went to prison twice for armed robbery."

Angel backed away and looked up at him. “What are you saying?"

"I'm sayin’ that I shoulda been more understandin'. Instead of bein’ angry that she was sneakin’ behind our backs—if that's even what she was doin'—I shoulda offered to help her. She needs help."

"So you do think she's using again."

He thought for a moment before answering. “Damn, I guess I do. But—"

"But what?"

"But that ain't all. That ain't the only reason I got mad. I was disappointed, too. Georgia's smart, Angel. She may look like Judd and have my bad temper, but she's smart. Smart like Rebel. I know she still needs to get her GED, but that girl could go to college; get an education and make somethin’ of herself. It pissed me off that she was willin’ to throw her life away just to get high."

"And that's why you lost it?” she asked. “That's why you went after her?"

He nodded. “That's most of it, I think. Pretty fuckin’ stupid, ain't it?"

"No, not at all. You sound like, well, like a parent who only wants the best for their child."

"I do want good things for Georgia. No thanks to the old man, that girl has been through hell. Most of all, I just want her to be happy."

Without responding, Angel simply stared at him.

"I'm worried, Angel Face,” he said, hearing the pain in his own voice, “not about her, but about me. I ain't never hit a girl. Never. As bad as I've always been, as nasty as some of the women that I've come in contact with have been, I ain't never touched a single one of them. I've yelled and cussed them out and said things ain't no one should ever have to hear, but I ain't never let my rage get the best of me like I did today. No matter how hard I struggled not to explode, I just couldn't keep it together. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"There's nothing wrong with you, Blackie, you made a mistake, that's all."

"I hit a girl, Angel! I hit my little sister and drew blood, for Christ's sake! What the hell kind of person does that make me? She ain't never gonna forgive me. Hell, I'll be lucky if Judd and Rebel forgive me. They had to restrain me because I couldn't get myself calmed down!"

"Your brothers aren't mad at you,” she told him, but he didn't believe it.

"You're wrong, Angel. Jay was here. He saw the whole thing. He said somethin’ to me about hittin’ Georgia, and I got pissed and gave him a dirty look. Do you know that Judd stepped in front of him and threatened to kill me if I touched his kid? I wasn't gonna do nothin’ to him, Angel, I was just pissed off ‘cause I knew he was right."

"No one's mad at you, Blackie,” she repeated. “But they're all worried about Georgia. It's cold out, and your brothers said all she was wearing when she left here was a sleeveless shirt. She didn't take any of her stuff with her, either. Everything's still in her room. She has no money, no clothes, and nowhere to go. I'm afraid of what she'll do."

"You think she'd leave town?"

"No. I don't believe for a second that she wants to leave her family. It's obvious that she loves us as much as we love her, and that she's happy here. But I do think she's hurting. If she's not using, then she's got to be hurt by the fact that all three of you ganged up on her, and accused her of doing something she's not. No one likes to feel bad, Blackie. Most people do everything they can to avoid it.

"What I think,” she paused and tucked a strand of her platinum blonde hair behind her right ear, “what I'm afraid of, is that she went down to Franklin Street in search of the one thing that kept her from hurting all those years she was being held by Dolan."

Blackie didn't think it was possible for him to feel any worse, but he was wrong. What his wife was saying, in a round about way, was that if Georgia hadn't been using heroin as of their conversation this afternoon, then there was a good chance she probably was now.

Back when she began her detox at the garage, she'd told Blackie and his brothers that heroin had numbed her. That when she was high, she didn't have to think about what was happening to her, didn't have to feel the emotions she didn't want to deal with.

Blackie and his damn out-of-control temper had driven his sister away from her family ... most likely right back into the arms of the drug that had almost killed her.

If something happened to Georgia before they could find her—whatever it was—it would be his fault.

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In the seven years he'd been clean, not once during his annual March eighteenth trek down Franklin Street had Wade felt an intense urge to get high.

Until today.

As he strolled casually up and down the sidewalk in the fading sunlight, Wade buttoned his flannel shirt in an effort to keep warm in the dropping temperatures. As he glanced periodically at the abandoned, drug-infested houses that lined the street, the same questions that had plagued him for the past thirteen years were running rampant through his mind.

Why had Tommy looked up to me so damn much?

Why did he have to follow me around and want to be just like me?

What if I hadn't given my little brother the heroin that killed him two days before his fifteenth birthday?

As he passed the boarded-up house where he used to meet his dealer, Wade fought that old feeling of anticipation mixed with excitement; the feeling that used to rush through his body just before he shot up. It was, as always, a struggle to pass by without going inside; for even though the house appeared to be abandoned, Wade knew it was inhabited, and that there was a flurry of activity going on just behind the crumbling brick façade.

But every year, he did it. His willpower won, and he moved on, surviving the self-imposed torture.

This was the first time since he'd gotten clean—since he realized exactly how many lives he'd ruined the day he'd put a needle in his brother's arm—that he questioned what it was all for. Sure, he'd helped a lot of people over the years. At least he thought he had. But after his parole had ended, he'd continued counseling for purely selfish reasons; feeling as though helping others would somehow erase the fact that he'd been responsible for ending his brother's life before it even had a chance to begin.

Visiting Franklin Street on the anniversary of Tommy's death—tempting himself with the one thing he knew he could never have—was the harshest way he knew to punish himself for what he'd done. Still, it never seemed harsh enough. Nothing he did was going to change the fact that Tommy was dead, or that Wade was the one responsible.

This year, his morbid trip down memory lane was twice as painful.

This year, he was missing more than just his brother.

He was missing Georgia, too.

Reluctant as he was to move into McCassey's Garage back in December, he'd enjoyed his time with Georgia. After she'd gone through withdrawal, started accepting his help, and they'd gotten to know each other, he'd realized what a smart, funny, and amazing person she was.

Once he'd left the garage and moved back into his apartment, he'd realized something else, too ... that he was in love with her.

Seeing her only once a week for an hour was far more torturous on him than the temptation he was now feeing to get high. Heroin, he could have anytime he wanted. Georgia, on the other hand, was something so far out of his reach that he'd be likely to sprout wings and fly before she looked at him as anything other than the guy who held her hair back as she puked into a bucket.